Return to Expedition 2000 homeDanae
May 1, 2000
Trailhead for Milwaukee Corridor
N47degrees13.34 at 2600ft
About 5 miles from Idaho border W117degrees06.4
Clear blue sky, about 50 degrees, will probably get mid-80’s; no humidity with a slight breeze
All I can see is low rolling hills. They seem to go on forever. Some are lush tilled soil and others are beautiful long green grassy hillsides of wheat. The only thing that cuts through this large green version of a Zen garden is the occasional winding stream or river.
The vegetation is grasses, wheat, and this one shrub that almost looks like the beginning of a blackberry bush: new shoots are red/burgundy with thorns, leaves have faint serrated edges. Berries are dead. Found one random flower but on closer inspection other bulbs were coming up. It was a yellow tulip.
Breakfast is interesting since we can’t tell if the powder we have is milk or pancake mix. Sleeping out under the stars was awesome! I saw like 6 satellites in about 20 minutes time. And my first shooting star! And I mean first ever!
Heard lots of frogs mating last night. Martha said she heard coyotes but I just heard local dogs. Heard some song birds this morning but haven’t seen any.
Pictures: 81-W, 82-E, 83-N, 84-S
N47degrees11.75 at 2400ft
W117degrees12.108
The temperature is about 70 degrees.
The vegetation is what I see described this morning. We've been walking through these rolling hills all morning. We've come across some apple trees along the trail.
A ladybug landed on me and is walking on me right now.
N47degrees14.79 at 2400ft
W117degrees15.99
The Apple Trees we came across sparked up Martha to talk about how the story of Johnny Appleseed had some truth in that Apple trees were almost always the first thing to be planted in new settlements. She also mentioned something about how the settlers would try to get Indians to live in certain places and that when you see a random apple tree in the middle of nowhere it might be an indication of that.
We had a hawk following us for a while. It kept sitting in the trees along the trail and if we got too close it would fly to trees farther up the trail. We also had a couple following us in this pattern.
Saw a few white-tailed deer and while I was watching one at our campsite -a guy "Joe Schmidt" drove up- he was the owner of the hill o' gravel that we were staying at. He was cool though and let us go about our business.
Saw lots of pheasants today. I even found a tail feather of one but Brandy thought it was a stick I wanted her to fetch and took it from me and chewed it. She's cute.
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